Piecing the Puzzle -- Visual, Audio, and Kickstarter

Approaching February, we currently have playable builds for four forest scenes, a village scene, a combat scene against bandits, and the main menu -- that page you stumble upon when you begin everything, with 'Start Game' and 'Continue' buttons. Each works as a stand alone, yet they're all separate, and we're currently piecing them together as one giant puzzle to solve.

Visual

We recently started making particle effects for subtle animations in the environment, tying together still-assets and animated ones while further beautifying your in-game experience. Particle effects basically made the river flow, the leaves flutter, and the items shine (so you can find them and grab them from the ground into your inventory). This screenshot is a good example as it has five particle effects in it: the campfire, campfire's light, candle, candle's light, and that shiny glow-things on the save point.

Audio

The visual aspect isn't all that makes a scene. Simfonia has been working hard to create ambience sound effects from bird chirps, crickets, flowing water, to chanting-like voice. When strategically placed using Unity's 3D Sound and combined with the graphics, they enrich the environment and give life to the scenes. As you walk through the forest scenes, you'll feel the smooth winds and gentle rivers, not just pieces of land slapped with background music.

Simfonia has also tied together the many different tracks they've made for Celestian Tales. Theme of the North, the track they created to unify the whole game under one identity, brought the music style together while giving new tracks more strength (Trailer, which we're going to use for the Kickstarter video, sounds really awesome). It's really hard to describe musical feelings with words, so why don't you grab a headphone and listen for yourself?

Kickstarter

We're nearly ready for the relaunch and wanted to show you the draft project page today, but the thing that got the whole team up this week is this: when we submitted our relaunch's draft page for review, Kickstarter declined our project. According to Luke, the Kickstarter staff contacting us, this is because our representative in the US is no longer eligible to be the creator of our project.

Therefore, we're currently asking our team member in Australia to be the representative instead. However, we're not exactly familiar with Australian tax laws and overseas fund transfers. If anyone has knowledge or experience on the field, would you please drop us a message? We'd really appreciate it if we can ask you for opinion. :)

As soon as we solve this problem, we'll send the relaunch's draft page for review. When we're clear to go on all fronts, we'll have a backers-only update for you to take a peek at the page before anyone else does.

That's about it for today's update. We'll see you again soon. Happy Chinese New Year!

Trivia: While only a minority of people in Indonesia celebrates the event, Chinese New Year is a national holiday.

Comments

Superbacker

Sorry wouldn't have a clue how our tax laws would effect a 'business venture' like this. Not sure what the problem with overseas fund transfers would be though, just need to take into account the fact that our dollar is trading a bit low at the moment compared to the greenback =(

Could maybe get into contact with some other Aussie kickstarters like 'Sprite Lamp' or 'Hand of Fate' for advice.

I'm very enthusiastic about this game given the updates since the fateful day of unfunding show the commitment of Ekuator Games. Many failed campaigns were abandonded but here we get one suprising update after another.

Regarding the size issue I have to agree with Mihir. The Screenshot looks fine, while the video sequenze gives the impression our little elven mistress became dwarfed.

I feel the character size is too small or the environment background is too zoomed in making them feel disproportionate to each other. In that sense, you seemed to have the correct sense of scale in your previous videos and old KS ones but here its very weird somehow.

Not saying that its bad, the art looks great, but I think its something you guys should look into.